It’s about us focusing on what we do

Burnley travel to Hull tomorrow and that means a meeting with their new manager Marco Silva for the first time since he replaced former Claret Micky Phelan in early January.

Speaking today in his press conference, Silva said: “We always think about one game and that’s the next game. We’re at home and we need to show our quality for ourselves and our fans. It’s just one more game. Of course we respect Burnley, they are in a good position in the table, but we want to win and it’s a good opportunity for us to take points.

“The last four at home we win, that’s important. They are more confident and the fans have been fantastic. We need them tomorrow again and I am sure they will be there.”

He added: “Tomorrow is one more chance for us to take points for us. There is a good spirit, they are confident. But until now we have won nothing. We need to prove always, day by day and tomorrow we need to prove again.

“When you play well the confidence comes in the club but we need to be ready, but if we don’t win nobody should throw the towel in.”

Sean Dyche got his first ever away win as Burnley manager at Hull when Dean Marney scored the only goal in a 1-0 win in November 2012, but I bet he’s tired of being asked about this season’s away record, more so this week with us now facing four successive away games.

“I think it’s brilliant for us, the timing’s magnificent,” he said. “Expectancy grows on the team you’re playing now. It’s a completely different thing now, going away. The run of away games, if you’re ever going to have them, have them now.

“The demand is on everyone else, it’s not on us. I think the onus is on the teams we’re going to. Don’t forget, at their end they’ll all be thinking we’ve got to beat these, because they haven’t been winning on the road. Their fans will all be thinking it, the manager will be thinking the same.

“What we know, internally, is we think we have been giving good performances. We think we’ve been giving enough to have got something already. We haven’t always got that and, as long as we take care of performances and that real drive to go and grip a game, and not just wait for it to happen, then I think we can turn things around away from home, without a shadow of a doubt.”

Hull have won four and drawn one of their last nine games but Dyche said: “It’s a slightly different game for them this time. If you think who they’ve played, they’ve been really free ones. They have been where they haven’t been expecting anything, Liverpool at home, Arsenal away etc., whereas against us I think their whole fan base, the whole staff, the players, will all be expecting to win because of our stats away.

“It’s about us focusing on what we do, because every ground we go to they (our opponents) will be under a lot of pressure, in the sense of playing a team that hasn’t won away. Therefore, with that comes higher expectation.

“We’ve never had it so free to go and play away, in the sense that no one expects you to get a result and yet, weirdly, statistically there’s an even bigger chance of you getting a result. Of course, our job is to go and get them. You don’t just wait for statistics to come and help you out.”